#103: Getting to 10x (results for developers)

Sponsored by DigitalOcean: pythonbytes.fm/digitalocean

Brian #1: FEniCS

• “FEniCS is a popular open-source (LGPLv3) computing platform for solving partial differential equations (PDEs). FEniCS enables users to quickly translate scientific models into efficient finite element code. With the high-level Python and C++ interfaces to FEniCS, it is easy to get started, but FEniCS offers also powerful capabilities for more experienced programmers. FEniCS runs on a multitude of platforms ranging from laptops to high-performance clusters.”
• Solves partial differential equations efficiently with a combination of C++ and Python.
• Can be run on a desktop/laptop or deployed to a supercomputer with thousands of parallel processes.
• is a NumFOCUS fiscally supported project
• “makes the implementation of the mathematical formulation of a system of partial differential equations almost seamless.” - Sébastien Brisard
• “FEniCS is in fact a C++ project with a full-featured Python interface. The library itself generates C++ code on-the-fly, that can be called (on-the-fly) from python. It's almost magical... Under the hood, it used to use SWIG, and recently moved to pybind11. I guess the architecture that was set up to achieve this level of automation might be useful in other situations.” - Sébastien Brisard

Michael #2: cursive_re

• via Christopher Patti, created by Bogdan Popa
• Readable regular expressions for Python 3.6 and up.
• It’s a tiny Python library made up of combinators that help you write regular expressions you can read and modify six months down the line.

• Best understood via an example:

      >>> hash = text('#')
      >>> hexdigit = any_of(in_range('0', '9') + in_range('a', 'f') + in_range('A', 'F'))
      >>> hexcolor = (
      ...     beginning_of_line() + hash +
      ...     group(repeated(hexdigit, exactly=6) | repeated(hexdigit, exactly=3)) +
      ...     end_of_line()
      ... )
      >>> str(hexcolor)
      '^\\#([a-f0-9]{6}|[a-f0-9]{3})$'
  

• Has automatic escaping for [ and \ etc: str(any_of(text("[]"))) → '[\\[\\]]'

• Easily testable / inspectable. Just call str on any expression.

Brian #3: pyimagesearch

• Adrian Rosebrock is focused on teaching OpenCV with Python
• Just a really cool resource of integrating computer vision and Python. Both free and paid resources.
• He had one of the most successful tech learning kickstarters (ever?) on this topic: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adrianrosebrock/deep-learning-for-computer-vision-with-python-eboo

Michael #4: Visualization of Python development up till 2012

• via Ophion Group (on twitter)
• mercurial (hg) source code repository commit history
• August 1990 - June 2012 (cpython 3.3.0 alpha)
• Watch the first minute, then click ahead minute at a time and watch for a few seconds to get the full feel
• Really interesting to see a visual representation of the growth of an open source ecosystem
• Built with Gource: https://gource.io/
  • Amazing video of the history gource and its visualization of various projects: https://vimeo.com/15943704
• Who wants to build this for 2012-present?
• Would make an amazing lightning talk!

Brian #5: Getting to 10x (Results): What Any Developer Can Learn from the Best

• Forget the “10x” bit if that term is fighting words. - Brian’s advice
  • How about just “ways to improve your effectiveness as a developer”?
• “… there is a clear path to excellence. People aren’t born great developers. They get there through focused, deliberate practice.”
• traits of great developers
  • problem solver
  • skilled
  • mentor/teacher
  • excellent learner
  • passionate
• traits to avoid:
  • incompetent
  • arrogant
  • uncooperative
  • unmotivated
  • stubborn
• Focus on your strengths more than your weaknesses
• Pick 1 thing to improve on this week and focus on it relentlessly

Michael #6: Chaos Toolkit

• Chaos Engineering is the discipline of experimenting on a distributed system in order to build confidence in the system's capability to withstand turbulent conditions in production.
• Netflix uses the chaos monkey (et. al.) on their systems. Covered on https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/16/python-at-netflix
• The Chaos Toolkit aims to be the simplest and easiest way
• to explore building, and automating, your own Chaos Engineering Experiments.
• Integrates with Kubernetes, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.
• To give you an idea, here are some things it can do to aws:
  • lambda: delete_function_concurrency Removes concurrency limit applied to the specified Lambda
  • stop_instance Stop a single EC2 instance. You may provide an instance id explicitly or, if you only specify the AZ, a random instance will be selected.

Extras:

• MK: Malicious Python Libraries Found & Removed From PyPI
• MK: Some really long type names
• Brian: Deep dive into pyproject.toml and the future of Python packaging with Brett Cannon
  • follow up from episode 100 Python Bytes